Children’s Health Expert Talks ‘Safe to Sleep’, SUID

Children’s Health experts have noticed national preventative services are battling sudden unexpected infant death. The government’s Safe to Sleep campaign has highlighted SUID as a persistent issue in the U.S., after a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that “ethnic [and] racial disparities persist in rates of sudden unexpected infant deaths.”

According to the CDC, recent data show SUID affects 3,700 individuals per year, and has continued to affect certain demographics. The latest study reported SUID rates remained highest for the American Indian and Alaska Native population, followed by non-Hispanic blacks. The CDC also found these deaths “occurred at 1-2 months of age, and the SUID rate was consistently higher for males among all races and ethnicities.” In Texas, the state’s department of health services says SUID affects 160 patients in Dallas-Fort Worth, with 55 percent of deaths being male.

Children Health’s Dr. Dawn Johnson, associate medical director of Children Health’s pediatric group, says the newly named Safe to Sleep campaign, which was formerly called Back to Sleep, aims to lower the rate of SUID deaths in the U.S. says the program. Launched in 1994, has been “one of the great successes in saving pediatric lives both in the USA and globally.”

Johnson, who says SUID includes sudden infant death syndrome, accidental strangulation, and suffocation in bed and other ill-defined or unspecified causes of death, remains the leading cause of death in infants from 28 to 364 days old. “This study … reveals that significant SUID race or ethnicity disparities persist with black, American Indian, and Alaskan Native infants having twice the risk of SUID as their white counterparts,” Johnson told D CEO Healthcare.

Johnson says the new study will help researchers “build on the success of the Safe to Sleep campaign by informing targeted research, education, and advocacy toward those who continue to be most vulnerable to SUID.”